SOURCE: Foreword to Watching, by Harlan Ellison, Underwood-Miller: Los Angeles, CA, 1989, pp. i–iii.

In the following essay, Kirgo discusses Ellison's style regarding movie reviews.

It takes but the reading of a single review in this collection [Harlan Ellison's Watching] to be aware that this is not your normal critic at work—nor, for that matter, your normal person.

Listen to Mr. Ellison as he writes of seeing Joe: “At the end of the film, it took my director friend, Max Katz, and his lady, Karen, to help me up the aisle. I could not focus. I was trembling like a man with malaria. There was a large potted tree on the sidewalk outside the theater. I managed to get to it, and sat there, unable to communicate, for twenty minutes. I was no good for two days thereafter.”

But did he like the movie?

What sets Harlan...